I am a Burmese exile taking a near-permanent refuge in New York and Sydney. Here are my essays about Burma and anything else I feel like writing about. And posting the articles I like from selected sites. Bridging Burma to the world this Blog is more of a Politically-Oriented Literary Blog than a Plain News Blog or a Sophisticated Thoughts Blog.

Saturday, April 23, 2016

Muslims Hacked Secular Bangladeshi Professor To Death

(CNN) BANGLADESH: Once again, a secular
Muslim is hacked to death for his un-Islamic views. Muslim assailants hacked to
death a Bangladeshi professor early Saturday near his home in Rajshahi city,
authorities said.

Rezaul Karim Siddique, 58, was an
English professor at Rajshahi University. He was waiting for a bus to take him
to campus when two or three people attacked him from behind and stabbed him in
the neck, according to Sadhir Haider Chowdhury, a city police commissioner.

The professor died on the spot. It's
unclear whether his attack was related to the recent hacking deaths of bloggers
in the nation. An investigation is ongoing.

ISIS claims responsibility

ISIS claimed responsibility for the
killing, according to Amaq, the terror group's media agency. "ISIS
fighters assassinated a University professor for calling to atheism in the city
of Rajshahi in Bangladesh," a statement from the group said.

CNN cannot immediately confirm ISIS'
claim, nor its statement on the religious beliefs of the victim. Earlier this
month, Bangladesh Law and Justice Minister Anisul Huq told CNN that it was
"safe to say that there is no existence of ISIS in this country."

Huq also dismissed reports "about
the claim of ISIS that they're trying to make Bangladesh their base headquarter
for operations in India, Bangladesh and Myanmar."

"That's their claim, one can claim
anything," he said.

Village is a 'hotbed of militants'

Earlier, a police official said the
killers might have been jihadis. "We believe Islamic militants were behind
the attack, because the nature of the incident is similar to previous attacks
carried out on atheist writers and activists," said Nahidul Islam, the
city's deputy police commissioner.

"Siddique was very active
organizing cultural events in the university," Islam said. "He was
also planning to open a music school in his home village, Bagmara." The village
"is a hotbed of JMB militants," police said. JMB refers to Jama'atul
Mujahideen Bangladesh, a fundamentalist Islamic organization in the nation.

But the deputy police commissioner
sounded a cautionary note, saying police had not found evidence that the
professor wrote or spoke against Islam.

'He had no political links'

And Anima Chowdhury, a former student
who studied literature with the professor from 2010-2015, said she saw nothing
political in him that could have led to such an attack. "I don't know what
the motive is, but he was a very good person and he had no political
links," Chowdhury said.

"He wasn't involved in any issues
that can cause this -- it's really mysterious and it was really shocking
because we didn't expect something like this could happen to him. I guess we
have to wait for the reasons."

Rajshahi University posted a message of
mourning on its Facebook page. "All classes and exams will be suspended
today and tomorrow to protest the killing of our English professor," the
post says.

Bangladeshi media reports on 7 August
2015 that Ansar al-Islam, a local chapter of al-Qaeda had claimed responsibility
for killing. A gang armed with machetes has hacked a secular blogger to death
at his home in Dhaka in the fourth such murder in Bangladesh since the start of
the year, an activist group and police have said.

Attacks on Bangladesh bloggers in 2015

Niloy Neel the live blogger.

August 6 - Niloy
Chatterjee, blogger, hacked to death at his home in Dhaka.

May 12 - Ananta Bijoy
Das, blogger for Mukto-Mona website, killed while on his way to work in the
city of Sylhet.

March 30 - Washiqur
Rahman Babu, blogger, hacked to death by three men in Dhaka.

Niloy Chatterjee, who used the pen-name
Niloy Neel, was murdered on Friday after the men broke into his flat in the
capital's Goran neighbourhood, according to the Bangladesh Blogger and Activist
Network, which was alerted to the attack by a witness.

"They entered his room in the fifth floor and shoved his friend aside and
then hacked him to death. He was a listed target of the Islamist
militants," the network's head Imran H Sarker, told the AFP news agency.

Later on Friday, Bangladeshi newspaper
The Daily Star, reported that Ansar al-Islam, a local chapter of al-Qaeda had
claimed responsibility for the killing. The newspaper said the group had sent
an email to media houses in Bangladesh, adding that the authenticity of the
email issued by Mufti Abdullah Ashraf, who claimed himself to be the spokesman
of Ansar-Al-Islam, could not be verified independently.

Chatterjee, 40, was a critic of
religious extremism that led to bombings in mosques and the killing of numerous
civilians, Sarker said. Police confirmed Chatterjee, who lived with his family,
had been murdered but had no details on his background. In a recent Facebook
post, Chatterjee said he was being followed by two strangers. He said he had
approached the police but they had refused to register his complaint.

The United Nations special rapporteurs
on freedom of expression, David Kaye, and on extrajudicial executions, Christof
Heyns, condemned the blogger's murder. "The violent killing of another
critical voice in Bangladesh shows that serious threats to freedom of
expression persist in the country," the pair said in a statement on
Friday, calling for a prompt and thorough investigation. "It is vital to
ensure the identification of those responsible for this and the previous
horrendous crimes, as well as those who may have masterminded the
attacks."

Niloy Neel the Dead Blogger.

There have been at least five bloggers attacked in Bangladesh since
2013, four of them since February of this year. "There a is serious lack
of inertia in part of Bangladesh authorities to investigate these thoroughly
and find the actual culprits behind all these killings," Al Jazeera's
Tanvir Chowdhury, reporting from Dhaka, said.

On May 12, Ananta Bijoy Das, another blogger, was killed in the Subid
Bazar area of Sylhet city as he walked to in the morning. In March, blogger
Washiqur Rahman Babu was hacked to death in Dhaka by three men over alleged
anti-Islamic writings, with two of the suspected attackers caught near the
scene. In February, Bangladeshi born American writer-blogger Avijit Roy was
killed near the Dhaka University campus.

At least in two of the cases, the
killers were apprehended, while in other cases only suspects were arrested.
Authorities said their links to "radical Islamist groups" are
"under investigation."

Sumit Galhotra, a spokesman at the New
York-based Committee to Protect Journalists, told Al Jazeera that the latest
incident "serve as a wake-up call" for the government, to do
"everything necessary" to arrest and prosecute the attackers. "Unless
the government establishes accountability on these cases, these attacks will
continue," he said, adding that many Bangladeshi bloggers are coming
threat for their work.

In 2013, Ansarullah Bangla Team, the
group many believe to be behind the recent spate of murders, published a hit
list of 84 secular bloggers. My name was on it. (This was not the only list,
nor would it be the only time my name would appear on one.)

I was listed because, like many of my fellow writers, I wrote blogs and
Facebook posts supporting a scientific outlook, women’s rights, and minority
issues. I was also critical of religious fundamentalism.

Killing of Bangladeshi-American Avijit Roy.

When on 26 February this year,
prominent blogger and Bangladeshi scientist Avijit Roy was hacked to death, I
and my fellow writers burned in anguish. We demanded the immediate arrest of
those responsible for Avijit’s killing but the government remained silent and
inactive.

As we later discovered, Avijit’s killing
was not an isolated incident. Washiqur
Babu, Ananta Bijoy Das, Niladry Neel and the latest, Arefin Dipon, all fell
victim to the “machete-reply” – an extremist response to scientific questions,
opinions and secular activities. The government’s continued reluctance to bring
justice in these cases further endangers other targeted bloggers.

12 November marks six months since the
murder of Ananta Bijoy Das, who worked closely with Avijit, yet there has been
no progress in finding his killers. To date, there has been no serious
investigation of any of the other murder cases, including Ahmed Rajib Haider
who was killed by the same group of extremists in the same way and for the same
reason two and a half years ago.

Too afraid to go to work

I stopped going to the office after one
of the machete killings. I was absent for so long, I was about to lose my job.
I was the sole breadwinner of my family – the financial impact would have been
dire. But what else could I do? My name was on several hit lists published by
extremists yet the police were not willing to protect me.

At least, that is how I felt after
hearing from other bloggers who asked the police for help without success. You
can’t imagine the panic I felt, thinking I might be chopped to pieces at any
time by anyone in the street.

I
tried to confine myself to my home. But, of course that was impossible. You
can’t imagine the panic I felt, thinking I might be chopped to pieces at any
time by anyone in the street. I monitored people around me constantly, checking
whether anyone was following me. It was as if everyone in the street was my
possible killer. It was a horrible, haunting situation.

No one could save me. My killers would
never be prosecuted. Rather, they would be regarded as heroes by certain
sectors of society. It was not even safe
for me at home. Niladri Neel adopted that strategy after asking the police for
help, but ultimately he was hacked to death in his own house. (As if the
Policemen themselves were alerting the Islamist killers?)

Somehow, with help from Amnesty and
other humanitarian organizations, I managed to flee Bangladesh. Apparently, I
am now in a safer place than my fellow bloggers are. But each time I read about
another killing, I know how my friends feel in Bangladesh, and remember how I
felt, too – how the cold current of fear would flow up my spine.

A generation living under “machete terrorism”

I don’t think any other generation in
Bangladesh’s history has lived under the threat of “machete terrorism” for such
a long period. No other generation has had to live with the constant fear of
death on its mind.

We are not smugglers, killers, rapists
or traitors. We simply write blogs and express our opinions. Some of us publish
books, some of us write on Facebook walls and many of us have demanded justice
for war crimes.

But the irony is that our opinions are
seen as heinous crimes, so we are being killed or exiled. Groups of young
bloggers, writers and activists are fleeing the country and heading for Europe.
And the number of people willing to condemn these killings shrinks, as pens are
being stopped every moment in Bangladesh.

Ananya Azad is Next. “You would be the
next. So be careful”, is what Bangladeshi blogger Ananya Azad received as a
Facebook message, after being listed as an atheist blogger against Islam by
radical Islamists. The Facebook message threatened Ananya with a gruesome death
for being the son of his ‘nastik’ father and that his throat will be slashed at
Dhaka University.

Azad is another blogger to be targetted by radical Islamists in
Bangladesh. In 2013, the Bangladesh Interior Ministry received a list of 84
‘atheist’ bloggers from radical Islamists. Most of the listed bloggers chose to
ignore such a threat until they started getting bumped off.

The Nine Murdered Bloggers Are:

1. Jafar Munshi:
Killed on February 14, 2013.

2. Rajeeb Haider:
Killed on February 15, 2013. Was hacked to death by machete-wielding men in the
Mirpur area of Dhaka.

3. Arif Hossain Dwip:
Killed April 9, 2013.

4. Ziauddin Zakaria
Babu: December 11, 2013.

5. Mamun Hossain:
Killed on January 12, 2014.

6. Jagatjyoti
Talukder: Killed on March 2, 2014.

7. Avijit Roy: Killed
on February 26, 2015. Stabbed repeatedly near the Teacher-Student Centre on the
Dhaka University campus when he and his wife were on the way home after
visiting the Amar Ekushey Book Fair.

8. Washiqur Rahman:
Killed on March 30, 2015. Hacked to death by men wielding meat cleavers in
Dhaka.

9. Ananta Bijoy Das: Killed on May 12, 2015,
in the Subid Bazar area of Sylhet city by machete wielding men.

Azad has been always blogging about counter religious intolerance issues
and religious fundamentalism, and so have been many other Bangladeshi bloggers.
While many of the listed bloggers are in hiding, Azad is contemplating on
leaving the country than live with the fear of assassination if out in the
open.